Lobster laws

Alex Ray pulls a lobster from the ocean floor near Dana Point Harbor on Friday morning. MACKENZIE REISS, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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Alex Ray pulls a lobster from the ocean floor near Dana Point Harbor on Friday morning. MACKENZIE REISS, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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Alex Ray hovers at the surface while he scouts the ocean terrain for spots where lobster are likely to be found. He carries a light to help him see in the sometimes murky water and a bag to stow lobsters, or "bugs" in. MACKENZIE REISS, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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Alex Ray free dives for lobster, which are usually found hiding in crevasses of rocks since they tend to hide during the day and hunt at night. . MACKENZIE REISS, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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Alex Ray hovers at the surface while he scouts the ocean terrain for spots where lobster are likely to be found. He carries a light to help him see in the sometimes murky water and a bag to stow lobsters, or "bugs" in. MACKENZIE REISS, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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Alex Ray free dives for lobsters at least once a week during lobster season which begins on September 28th and closes on March 19, 2014. MACKENZIE REISS, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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Alex Ray measures a lobster, or "bug" to make sure it is large enough to legally take from the ocean. MACKENZIE REISS, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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Alex Ray pulls a lobster from the ocean floor near Dana Point Harbor on Friday morning. MACKENZIE REISS, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

Lobster protection

Thirty-six Marine Protected Areas were put in place along Southern California's shore in January 2012 as part of the overall network of marine reserves established along the state's coastline.

Despite the immediate setbacks to commercial and recreational fishermen, many scientists and anglers are hopeful the MPAs will actually benefit the fisheries – including lobster – in the long run.

The hope is that the larger and higher population of lobsters in the reserves will "spill over" to fishing spots outside of the marine reserves, leading to more catching for anglers and a more sustainable fishery.

For the Southern California closures, it may take more than a decade to really see the impacts the Marine Protected Areas have had on the region's fisheries and environment.

What's next

The California Fish and Game Commission will be looking at a list of regulations, limits and ideas that the Lobster Advisory Committee recommended for the new Lobster Fisheries Management Plan. The plan will be used to regulate commercial and recreational lobster fishing and keep the lobster fishery sustainable.

The list will be presented to the commission at its December 11-12 meeting in San Diego. The commission will ultimately decide on what limits to impose on the fishery, and a draft of the Lobster Fishery Management Plan is scheduled to come out by spring 2014.

If all goes as planned, the new regulations could be in place by the end of 2015.

By the Numbers

37,442

Total number of Lobster Report Cards issued statewide in 2012. The cards must be carried by recreational fishermen targeting lobster.

1.4

Pounds; the average weight for California spiny lobsters caught commercially

7

The current daily catch limit allowed for each recreational lobster fisherman

1.2 million

Pounds of lobster taken by commercial and recreational fishermen in 2012.

Total dock value of lobster caught commercially in 2012, beating the previous price record of $12.9 million set the year before

Graphics

Waves crumble, but not on shore.

Rocks just three feet underwater churn up the swell a quarter-mile off Dana Point. A lone snorkel sticks out of the water as a camouflaged head faces the ocean floor, scanning.

A few smooth kicks and Alex Ray is 15 feet deep, gliding along the rocky edge, peering into each crack and crevice. He’s looking for antennae – because that’s the only part of a spiny lobster you’ll see exposed – and he’s hoping he can turn a few into a home-cooked meal.

His diving suit, which he also uses for spearfishing, looks like a deer hunter’s jacket, but stretches from his hood to his booties. He hopes the suit helps him blend in with the green-tinted water and kelp in the area.

“Who knows if it works, but it can’t hurt,” Ray says.

A Dana Point native, Ray is one of more than 30,000 people who fish recreationally for spiny lobster in Southern California – and with the 2012 closure of 6 miles of Laguna Beach’s waters to fishing, Orange County lost one of its most productive sport and commercial lobster locations.

Since then, divers, hoop-netters and commercial lobstermen have been attempting to adjust to the changes, just as new talks of lobster regulations get underway that could further limit catches.

“Us recreational guys are having to change our habits, but the commercial guys are much more affected,” Ray said. “There are guys that have been fishing Laguna for years, and now they’re having to find new spots in other guys’ territory.”

Opening day, closed anyway

The season started at midnight Sept. 28, spurring the annual ritual of hundreds of recreational anglers taking to the water at 12:01, dropping their first hoop nets and making their first dives of the season in the dead of night.

With the diver’s underwater flashlights and the lobster hoop-netter’s glow sticks tied to the top of their buoy lines, popular lobster spots off Dana Point, San Pedro and along Long Beach’s breakwater are lit up throughout the night.

“Looks like the Vegas strip,” Ray said. Laguna Beach used to look like Christmas on the water too.

“It was perfect for shore diving,” Ray said. “You could walk out from the sand of any of the coves out to the rocky reefs and border rocks and start looking for bugs. There’s not too many places in the county like that”

“Bug” is the colloquial term for the spiny lobster – similar in taste to the more popular Maine Lobster, but lacking the large claws. The arthropod is found in Southern California’s waters from Point Conception down south across the Mexican border, and has been targeted by sport and commercial anglers since the early 1900s.

“They hide under rocks and come out to forage at night. They’re like cockroaches that hide under your refrigerator, only tasty,” Ray said.

Valuable commodity

For commercial lobsterman Josh Fisher, October is his “money month.”

The season starts the first Wednesday of the month for the commercial side, and Fisher pushes hard early to try and get a jump on the competition.

“It can make or break a season,” Fisher said. “I’m out fishing nearly every day through the month.”

He is one of around 190 lobster fisherman in California with a commercial lobster permit. That number will shrink to around 150 over time, as the non-transferable permits are phased out in an effort to limit lobster take along California’s coast.

With the high demand for spiny lobsters in China, the transferable permits are being sold for $70,000 to $100,000 between fishermen.

“We closed the season last March around $23 a pound,” Francis said.

In 2012, about $13.7 million worth of lobster was brought dockside by commercial anglers, replacing the record value of $12.9 million from 2011. While spiny lobster value has increased due the Asian market demand, Fisher remains wary of what the Marine Protected Areas could impact the industry, particularly in displacing commercial boats from their old hunting grounds.

Closures creates crowds

The Laguna Beach reserve was just one of 36 Southern California locations set aside as a Marine Protected Area by the Department of Fish and Game that resulted in the closure of about 15 percent of the coastline to fishing.

The plan, as outlined by the Marine Life Protection Act passed in 1999, creates a statewide network of marine reserves, or “underwater Yosemites” that work in conjunction to help marine life. And while the other 85 percent of state waters remain open, commercial and recreational lobster fishermen opine that the selected reserves in Orange County make up about 60 percent of the actual productive fishing areas.

In 2010, with the closures imminent, Fisher moved his boat from Dana Point Harbor to Los Angeles Harbor to fish lobster habitat he says pales in comparison to the closed-off Laguna coast. He saw approximately 10 to 12 commercial fishing boats impacted by the Laguna Beach closure alone, having to leave their regular fishing spots and move to others.

“Some people say fishermen can go fish elsewhere, but you can't catch lobsters in the sand, which is most of what our coast has,” Fisher said. “Now those guys who were displaced have to fish where other guys already fish, so you get crowding and added fishing pressure on the remaining open areas.”

On the recreational side, both Ray and Jim Salazar, who fishes for lobster with hoop-nets that he drops and pulls up from his boat, say the closures have crowded the remaining popular areas and sent some coastline regulars out to Catalina and the other Channel Islands for better chances at lobster.

“They’re really concentrated the hoop-netters, divers and commercial guys down there, and the less crowded spots like San Clemente and Crystal Cove are getting more pressure,” Salazar said.

New rules, healthy lobster

With the closures in place, the Department of Fish and Game began creating a plan specifically for spiny lobsters called the Lobster Fishery Management Plan. Over the past year, a committee has been discussing the best ways to better regulate the lobster fishery.

Working on the committee are commercial and recreational fishing members, environmentalists, marine scientists and fish and game staff. While throwing all of the different stakeholders of the lobster fishery and environmental groups in one room could have turned into finger-pointing, the consensus from committee members was an overall desire to get the fishery in the best place for the future.

Dana Murray, a coastal research scientist with Heal the Bay, attended a number of meetings and saw a group work with one goal in mind; keep the fishery sustainable.

“It seemed that the fishermen understood that the call to create the Lobster Fishery Management Plan wasn’t because the fishery was doing poorly, or because it was doing well; it was simply the right thing to do,” Murray said.

“The classic model for other fisheries so far has been to fish it until it’s nearly gone, then try to perform CPR on the fishery until it’s revived,” Ray said, who has been keeping tabs with committee members through the lobster plan process. “This is a better approach.”

After nine meetings over the past year, the group came up with a list of regulations and ideas to help preserve the California spiny lobster and keep the fishery healthy.

The list of proposals includes limiting the number of traps each commercial boat can have to 300, limiting the catch total for recreational fisherman to 70 lobsters per year, and shrinking the number of hoop nets fished per person from five to four.

The proposals would bring limits to both the commercial and recreational side, whereas before there was no trap limits and no annual catch limits.

Currently, around 70,000 to 100,000 commercial traps could be along California’s shore at any time during the lobster season, but with the 300-trap limit, the total cap could be set at 43,000 in the coming years.

“Not having all of those traps out there in the water will be a benefit to everyone but the commercial guys,” said Paul Romanowski, a 20-year recreational lobster diver on the committee. “After this, nobody can say the commercial fishermen were greedy. They made enormous concessions.”

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